2009 Aug 12, 8:08"In a formal academic paper, every claim is referenced to another academic paper... This convention gives us an opportunity to study how ideas spread, and myths grow, because in theory you could
trace who references what, and how, to see an entire belief system evolve from the original data."
science meme research health medicine ben-goldacre network graph 2009 Aug 3, 11:06"But how efficient is the alphabet at encoding information on a page?"
via:ericlaw humor paper storage encoding 2009 Jul 31, 5:57"Is it worth the sensationalism and scaremongering? The endlessly inaccurate and dangerous science reporting? The pointless and news-free lifestyle articles? Do newspapers that prioritise stories
based on celebrities and spectacle rather than importance to the world deserve to exist?"
via:sambrook internet news journalism media 2009 Jul 6, 2:06"Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pate or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst... Although 72%
of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste... subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food."
humor science statistics food culture research study paper 2009 Jun 22, 7:00"...computer technology has made it to the late sixth century AD, at best. In the olden days, you see, the upper classes were able to read and write, but they generally preferred not to. They left it
to people who had to do it, like scribes and clergymen."
literature paper history literacy religion 2009 May 3, 10:03"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures - DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Information
and Computer Science by Roy Thomas Fielding 2000"
http rest paper web architecture development api webservices roy-fielding 2009 Apr 23, 2:22Review of mime sniffing based XSS attacks with recommended protections for both web sites and browsers. Also, surprising to me since I rarely see it in this sort of a paper, thought and stats on the
compat. affects of their recommended changes for browsers. Very happy to see that in there!
web security ie browser xss sniff mime firefox chrome safari html html5 2009 Apr 3, 11:38Har har
humor free paper photo flickr 2009 Apr 1, 9:48"For our latest mission, 30 Improv Everywhere agents found a random funeral in the obituary section of the newspaper and turned it into the best funeral ever... The family, especially the older
couple in the middle, were seriously mourning. They seemed to be focusing on the priest and mostly ignoring us. Still, we had to be as serious as we possibly could. If anyone cracked a smile or
giggled we would completely ruin the funeral for the family."
humor parody video improv-everywhere 2009 Apr 1, 9:20"Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter"
humor news twitter journalism newspaper 2009 Mar 16, 2:35"Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be
indistinguishable. That's been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we're going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead."
internet clay-shirky newspaper copyright history journalism via:ethan_t_hein 2009 Feb 26, 11:52This is what I'd like in a newspaper: "1: Focus on original content, do not rewrite wire stories or press releases." and "2: Focus on hyper-local coverage, newspapers should "own" their regional beat
because they have the best contacts and the best understanding of local companies and issues."
via:sambrook newspaper advertising business journalism internet 2009 Feb 4, 4:16From Sorting it all Out wrt the weather gadget in Vista's sidebar, this link to China's laws on weather forecast: "Article 22 The State applies a unified system for the issue of public meteorological
forecast and severe weather warning... No other organizations or individuals may issue to the community such forecast or warning." "Article 25 When the media, including radio, television, newspaper
and telecommunication, issue to the community public meteorological forecast or severe weather warning, they shall use the latest meteorological information provided by a meteorological office...
Part of the revenues from the distribution of meteorological information shall be drawn to support the development of meteorological service." Whether an application is legally allowed to provide a
weather forecast is not an attribute I would have imagined necessary for a localization API.
via:michael-kaplan china law legal politics weather forecast localization 2009 Jan 22, 9:43'Behind the press reports, the academic community has been engaged in a hot debate over whether the evidence supports a connection between the violent content of games and any behavioral effects. One
of the researchers who has argued forcefully that it's not is Christopher Ferguson, who has just published a paper that argues that the continued societal focus on games as a causal factor in
violence is an example of what's termed a "moral panic."'
game violence society videogames 2009 Jan 15, 9:41"Russell and I thought it would be interesting to take some stuff from the internet and print it in a newspaper format. Words as well as pictures. Like a Daily Me, but slower. When we discovered that
most newspaper printers will let you do a short run on their press (this was exactly the same spec as the News Of The World) we decided to have some fun."
blog internet design art newspaper typography print publishing via:mattb 2008 Dec 31, 2:14Art on boxes: "the rules are quite simple: rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. make the most of least."
art box design diy paper gallery sculpture doodle illustration 2008 Nov 9, 11:29
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the
same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for
magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to
find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google
conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of
basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an
action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing
parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my
location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
tmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google 2008 Nov 9, 11:18
This past Tuesday I voted in my first presidential election. Of course I was eligible twice before so don't tell my social studies teacher. I
read about folks who stood in line for twelve hours waiting to vote but I personally had no issues. I found the voting location around 10am and it seemed appropriately busy: There were people
voting but no lines. I came in and looked confused until an elderly lady gave me a paper to bubble in. The voting booth was more like a fold out voting table at a very awkward height and in the end
my back ached. It feels better to vote in person and have a back ache after. Its more like I've accomplished something.
personal voting 2008 Oct 31, 7:10Bruce Schneier pointed out this book: "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (Paperback)". Its 600 pages of random numbers. I'd get a copy if it didn't cost $90! From the stats page
Amazon lists the 100 most used words in the book: "6 8 11 19 23 28 30 32 37 38 42 47 52 54 56 60 72 77 80 84 86 92 101 102 107 108 111 115 125 126 131 143 147 148 150 157 158 163 166 167 171 179 183
188 190 197 206 207 212 215 218 220 226 228 230 234 236 242 247 249 251 253 261 265 272 292 297 304 311 323 332 336 337 338 344 345 354 356 358 359 364 371 372 374 384 389 391 409 412 413 421 433 436
443 457 481 489 516 517 642"
via:schneier random book humor math csc 2008 Sep 30, 11:05Article on the team that owns the Office spell-checker: 'But, the team asked itself, should "calender" be flagged, or squiggled - have the red squiggly underline that indicates a misspelling? Yes,
because letting it go through as correct "more often masks the really common spelling error that people make for calendar."' I didn't even realize they had written calender rather than calendar in
the article
microsoft office spell-check language